Anna+Adler

At around 1:30 a.m. on September 9, 1913, 27-year-old Anna Bucky Adler, a homemaker and Russian immigrant, died in Chicago's St. Anthony's Hospital after an abortion performed by Dr. Lou. E. Davis that day.

 Davis was arrested that day, and she was indicted by a Grand Jury on October 15, but the case never went to trial.

Davis was also implicated in five other Chicago abortion deaths:
 * April, 1924, 26-year-old Mary Whitney
 * November, 1928, 22-year-old Anna Borndal
 * December, 1928, 23-year-old Esther V. Wahlstrom
 * May, 1932, 24-year-old Irene Kirschner
 * February, 1937, 27-year-old Gertrude Gaesswitz

Note, please, that with overall public health issues such as doctors not using proper aseptic techniques, lack of access to blood transfusions and antibiotics, and overall poor health to begin with, there was likely little difference between the performance of a legal abortion and illegal practice, and the aftercare for either type of abortion was probably equally unlikely to do the woman much, if any, good. For more information about early 20th Century abortion mortality, see [|Abortion Deaths 1910-1919].

For more on pre-legalization abortion, see [|The Bad Old Days of Abortion]

 Sources:
 * Homicide in Chicago Interactive Database
 * The day book, Sept. 10, 1913
 * death certificate



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